


Been There Done That

by TenSpencerRiedPlease



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Anyways, Asexual Bucky Barnes, Demiromantic Tony Stark, Humor, Inappropriate Humor, Just a lil thing I whipped up for fun, Natasha Is a Good Bro, No Plot/Plotless, POV Alternating, Random & Short, Strange dissertation subjects, because I thought the ship was cute, carry on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-12
Updated: 2016-10-12
Packaged: 2018-08-22 00:54:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8266751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TenSpencerRiedPlease/pseuds/TenSpencerRiedPlease
Summary: Tony never intended to end up in a relationship with two people. Hell, he never intended to end up in a relationship with one person let alone two. But he was walking through the school cafeteria one day when a red head caught his eye, but what really caught his attention was her dissertation topic. “I’m sorry, did I just hear you say you’re currently writing a PhD dissertation on memes?” he asks, stopping in his tracks and frowning at her.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what this is, I just thought it was cute lol. Also there's probably no way Bucky's project could get past ethics, I just thought the idea sounded fun given how much people like to connect drugs and creativity. Do not give your undergrads drugs. 
> 
> Warnings for a mention of drugs, some very dark inappropriate humor that may offend, a little bit of internalized acephobia (more mentioned than anything), same for arophbia, and I think that's it. If not let me know and I'll ad it in. 
> 
> Anyways, I hope that you like it!

Natasha stretches herself out, unconcerned that she was half laying on Bucky. In her defense he didn’t care either. He carefully pulls his arm out from under her and drops it around her shoulders instead of leaving it pinned between her abdomen and his side. “You don’t… _care_ do you?” he asks after several moments of watching some absurd alien show. Bucky hated them and Steve hated them even more but Natasha thought they were the funniest things she’s ever seen so she watched them a lot. Her favorite thing was to invite Steve over so she could watch him go on social justice rants about racism and aliens. In his defense he wasn’t exactly wrong, but his irritation with the subject made the shows all the better. Besides, who didn’t like some good alien theories? Besides Bucky, but he’s no fun.

“No, Barnes, I don’t care,” she says, knowing exactly what he was talking about despite his not naming the subject at hand.

“Are you sure? Because-” he starts and she cuts him off.

“I’m going to be honest here- I prefer it,” she says. Bucky whips his head around to look at her, shocked by the admission. “I’m beautiful,” she says and Bucky cuts her off before she can continue.

“Well yeah, it isn’t that I don’t think you’re pretty, I-”

“Shush, Bucky. I know the difference between aesthetic attraction and sexual attraction. I can think a cat is cute without being sexually attracted to it- actually that’s for the best, not being sexually attracted to cats. Anyways. I’m beautiful and my whole life people have never let me forget it. Sometimes it’s nice because I know people treat me better for it, but then they start expecting things from me. You have no idea how many guys have acted like I owed them something because I happen to be pleasing to the eye. A good portion of what makes you attractive is that you’ve never done that- acted like I owed you because I gave you a boner by existing while pretty. I never thought I’d find a guy that would just let me exist in lingerie without thinking I wanted some sort of sexual contact out of it. I just like lace, okay? Let me live,” she says.

Truth be told she knew Bucky was asexual long before he actually told her that. In part that was because Steve got particularly drunk at pub night and told her, but mostly she noticed that Bucky happened to be the sex repulsed variety of asexual. It wasn’t hard to pick up on the difference of some horn dog constantly trying to get into her pants and Bucky, who was equally excited about memes as she was. She’s met like three guys _ever_ who were willing to have actual conversations with her without ever assuming sex would be on the table at some point. Bucky’s complete inaction in that department had drawn her to him because he actually listened to her thoughts and ideas rather than nodding along for as long as it took to get a blowjob out of it.

“That’s why you wear lingerie? I thought that was like… a weird come on or something,” Bucky says, frowning.

“No honey, I just like the lace. It’s pretty and I know you aren’t going to try and stick your dick in me for wearing it. That’s so exciting,” she says with a grin.

He shakes his head and smiles, “of course you just like the lace. That’s so you. But… don’t you like… want sex? Because that’s never going to be on the table with me,” he says. At least he was blunt about it, she could appreciate that. But then Bucky was a pretty blunt person, another thing that attracted her to him to begin with.

“Sure, sex is nice, but if you aren’t interested that’s that. There is no way I could possibly get around that without looking like a creep at the least or a sexual predator at the worst. Besides, junk food is also nice but I don’t want to eat copious amounts of pizza all the time. And I could live without it even I’d still crave it sometimes. But memes? I could never live without memes. Dicks out for Harambe,” she says, dead serious.

Bucky throws back his head and laughs and she smiles, happy that for now she seemed to have alleviated his worries.

*

Tony never _intended_ to end up in a relationship with two people. Hell, he never intended to end up in a relationship with _one_ person let alone two. But he was walking through the school cafeteria one day when a red head caught his eye, but what really caught his attention was her dissertation topic. “I’m sorry, did I just hear you say you’re currently writing a PhD dissertation on _memes_?” he asks, stopping in his tracks and frowning at her.

She looks up at him, surprised but she regains her composure quickly. “yeah, it’s about memes,” she says.

For a moment Tony is so stunned he doesn’t know what to do but he figures himself out quickly. “Man, mine’s on the algorithms needed to generate a semi-autonomous AI system that can predict the user’s needs before the user even knows what they want but I am clearly in the wrong business. What in the _hell_ lets you write a dissertation about memes? Please, tell me more,” he says, pulling out a chair and sitting down, looking at her intently.

The red head raises an eyebrow but she complies, “cultural studies,” she says.

“Okay but _memes_? How are those relevant? I’m not trying to be an ass,” he adds, “I’m genuinely curious.” He had no idea why STEM students seemed to have this bizarre dislike towards humanities students because Tony had a lot of interest in the subjects. He sure as hell couldn’t pull a meaning from _memes_ of all things and he’d be damned if he didn’t get to the bottom of why the red head thought they were important enough to write and entire dissertation on them.

“Technically I’m writing about mental health and memes. But it’s called ‘Dicks Out For Harambe: Black Meme Humor as a Coping Mechanism For Worsening States of Mental Health in North America’. Technically that has nothing to do with Harambe but what dumbass would pass up writing ‘dicks out for Harmabe’ on an academic paper? And it is kind of dark, the meme I mean, poor Harambe,” she says. The guy beside her starts laughing, his long hair falling into his face and _damn_.

Tony thought the red head was pretty but this one was prettier so he leans forward, “and what are _you_ studying?” he asks, well, flirts. Rhodey would be once again surprised at how me managed to make school sound attractive and flirtatious. If he was honest, and he was never going to be honest with Rhodey about this, he practiced for _hours_ to get the tone right.

“I gave a bunch of people drugs to see if they actually help with cognitive process and creativity. It’s on the psychology of imagination,” the brunette tells him.

“I… you can _do_ that?” Tony asks, floored by this.

“If you go through a lot of ethics stuff and pay undergrads enough yeah, you can give ‘em LSD. And a few other drugs reportedly linked to heightened creativity, including alcohol,” the brunette says.

“What the fuck? I am in the _wrong_ business. How do I get in on being paid to do drugs, though?” He should get Bruce in on it; he could use a cone or two to calm the hell down after his project causing him so much stress. But his work on anti-electron collisions was unparalleled so he had a lot to be proud of.

“Study’s done, the results were inconclusive. Pretty sure creativity and imagination is linked to creative and imaginative people, not drugs, but I need to say that in like seventy pages instead of like fifty words,” he says.

Tony sits back in his seat, “I need to call my friends and tell them the humanities majors are writing papers on memes and drugging undergrads because this is _news_ and the STEM students are missing out. Well, business in Pepper’s case,” he says. And boy was she good at it; he’s so hiring her when she gets her degree because he would be an absolute dolt if he didn’t.

“STEM students are boring and so is your theoretical AI. No offense,” the brunette says, looking unrepentant.

“Bucky!” the red head says, smacking the brunette’s- Bucky’s- arm. And oh hey, he only had one of those, interesting. “That’s rude,” she tells him.

“It’s true, math is the product of the devil and needs to be eradicated,” Bucky says, still unrepentant.

“Math only sucks if you don’t get it, which is like always. But the AI isn’t theoretical; I made it, JARVIS works just fine. He’s got a few kinks to work out, not the fun kind, but he’s operational. I can’t want to shove _that_ in my asshole supervisor’s face,” he says proudly. He got told that JARVIS was impossible but here he was with a working prototype so his supervisor could eat shit.

“JARVIS?” the red head asks.

“Yeah, ‘Just A Rather Very Intelligent System’. He’s awesome, and I love him,” he says totally unironically, forgetting for a moment that normal people did not grow attachments to lines of code. But in his defense JARVIS was _special_ code, all the science journals will agree.

The red head snorts, “I like you-” she starts but her companion cuts her off.

“You’re Tony Stark,” he blurts.

“Uh huh, the one and only. You’re Bucky, but you are…?” he asks the red head, raising an eyebrow.

“Natasha,” she says with a smooth grin.

*

The last thing Bucky expected was a movie date- though technically not a _date_ date- with Tony Stark. At it turned out he was also a fan of ridiculous conspiracy theories involving aliens, the gay agenda, and himself. Bucky would have found that last bit arrogant if he hadn’t given ‘Tony Stark conspiracy theories’ a Google search only to find that there were actual people who thought he was a skin sack full of cats. Those were some smart cats if that was the case. That was also one of the more tame theories too, so he let it go in favor of seeing what ridiculous movies or conspiracy theories the two decided were entertaining enough to waste time on.

“You know what you should have written your dissertation on?” Tony asks, flopping into a seat beside Bucky, “why prolonged eye contact makes people uncomfortable.” He holds the eye contact and Bucky isn’t sure if he’s allowed to look away and after two more seconds he’s actively cringing.

“Why are you like this?” he asks, refusing to look away until Tony looked away.

“Because,” Tony says, leaning in, “I want you to _suffer_.”

Bucky wrinkles his nose, “it working this is so weird,” he mumbles.

“Hey, if you two are going to make out let me know so I can watch,” Natasha says, drawing Tony’s attention away and thankfully releasing Bucky from Eye Contact Hell.

“Aren’t you two dating? I mean I will _gladly_ make out Bucky but I’m not keen on overstepping my bounds. I accidentally slept with this guy’s wife and he tried to murder me. Thankfully Rhodey saved my ass,” Tony says in far too casual a tone, like this sort of thing happened all the time. From his short time knowing Tony this probably was the sort of thing that happen to him all the time, he got into all sorts of weird shenanigans.

“You _accidentally_ slept with his wife? Did you like… slip and fall in?” Bucky asks skeptically. That was not at all how sex worked, but the absurd and anatomically impossible explanations for people’s sex lives amused Bucky. Sometimes an outsiders view made this more hilarious than it should.

“Nah, she didn’t tell me she was married. Ergo it was an accident but he didn’t like that answer,” Tony says, rolling his eyes.

“Mock slipping and falling in all you want, Bucky, but I want to see if it’s possible. Also, in regards to the wife thing, that sucks for you Tones.” Natasha squeezes her way in between them, shimmying around to get comfortable, “so what are we watching? I hope something on the gay agenda, I wanna see what my people are up to these days,” Natasha says, grinning.

“Your people? Neat, guess I don’t have to worry about you making stupid ‘so are you sexually attracted to pans’ jokes in regards to pansexuality. Hopefully anyways, I hate when I run into a bi or gay people who think that’s funny. The answer is no, I’m not sexually attracted to pans,” Tony says in an irritated tone. Oh Bucky knew the feeling, people didn’t tend to react well to his asexuality. His last girlfriend _cried_ when he told her because she thought something was wrong with him _and_ her, and the last time he told a friend that wasn’t Steve he suddenly stopped being a ‘real’ man. Too be fair he probably could have done without Brock as a friend but he had good weed and Bucky didn’t feel like finding a new dealer. Then he met Natasha and she didn’t pressure him or question him, when he pulled away she just accepted it and made some terrible meme joke.

“But they’re so sexy,” Bucky says, grinning at the inside joke. Natasha snorts and actually _giggles_ because she got the reference to his asexuality but he gets a glare from Tony. “I’m kidding, my best friend is also pansexual and he’s also like five feet tall so we joke that he’s a pansexual pixie. He hates it but it’s funny.” Steve’s small stature was something he used to be a lot more insecure about but he since came to the conclusion that gender expectations were bullshit anyways and Bucky kind of enjoyed his rants about it. Probably because he’s been personally victimized by narrow standards that made him into something abhorrent for existing in a way he couldn’t help, like Steve and being ‘too small’ for a man.

“Five feet? I need to meet him so I can bring him to parties and people can joke about _his_ height instead of mine,” Tony says grumpily.

“Just wear heels,” Natasha suggests, “I have a cute black pair you can borrow.”

“The strappy ones? I like those,” Bucky chimes in.

“They sound adorable, but I’m not looking to be made fin of for something new,” Tony says.

“Just stab them in the junk with your cute new heel,” Natasha tells him, lips tipping up into a smile.

“I wouldn’t do that the shoes,” Tony says sadly. Bucky and Natasha throw their heads back and laugh.

*

Natasha stretches out over Bucky and Tony while the two prattle on about their favorite Cards Against Humanity cards. “Geese and hot pockets always win,” she says, interrupting the two, “oh, and Oprah sobbing into a lean cuisine.”

Tony snorts, “you would pick the crappiest options if for no other reason than them being completely ridiculous.”

“I know a guy, he’s Jewish, but his favorite combination is ‘what’s that smell’ answered with ‘Auschwitz’. The look on his face when people know he’s Jewish and he lays down that card is pretty priceless too because no one can _laugh_. That’s his people, it’s insensitive to laugh with him _right there_ ,” Bucky says. That doesn’t stop Tony from doubling over busting a gut though.

“Lehnsherr?” Natasha asks and Bucky nods, “he is one sick puppy.” They got along well though, he got the very dark humor that usually scared people off and Charles was an absolute delight.

“Oh that’s good. I maintain that ‘a windmill full of corpses’ is the best though, or the card with my name on it. It’s funnier when I lay it down- wait, Lehnsherr? As in _Erik_ Lehnsherr? I know him! He’s a brilliant engineer and he makes some _really_ nice metal art. I have no clue how he gets the metal to do those things but it looks pretty sweet when it’s done,” Tony says, catching up on the rest of the conversation a bit late.

“That’d be the correct Lehnsherr,” Bucky confirms.

“Ahh, okay. Terrifying dude. His boyfriend, Charles, regularly gets into wheelchair races with Rhodey and this one time Rhodey accidentally ran into Charles and knocked him over and I laughed like _so_ hard. At least until I saw the look on Lehnsherr’s face and just about lost my dinner out my ass. He knows how to deliver a powerful murder glare,” Tony says, shuddering at the memory.

“You know that shark smile thing he does?” Natasha asks and Tony nods, “ _that’s_ what he does when he laws down that Auschwitz card. He knows he’s got us all by the balls because he knows we’re all a bunch of insensitive jerks just _dying_ to laugh at that but we aren’t going to do it with him _sitting there_. We might be insensitive but we aren’t looking to die at the hands of a big angry gay Jewish dude.” Except Clint, who went on for so long Phil scotched his chair over some so that Erik knew that if he killed Clint right there he had Phil’s blessing, but also don’t kill him for associating with Clint’s insensitive ass.

“Note to self, never _ever_ play Cards Against Humanity with Erik Lehnsherr unless I have a death wish. Also never laugh Charles falling over because Rhodey accidentally ran into him ever again. And you know what, that isn’t even fair because he laughs when Rhodey gets knocked over. Which is also hilarious, FYI,” Tony says, waving a hand around.

“You are such a jerk,” Bucky tells him, laughing.

“What? Rhodey laughs at me when I trip, which is often because I’m bad at cleaning up after myself. I feel like it’s fair to laugh at your friends’ misfortunes unless they’re actually hurt. So Rhodey totally shouldn’t have laughed when I thought I would look good blonde and instead I ruined myself and had to hide under my bed for two weeks until it grew out enough that I could cut it,” Tony says dramatically.

“You hid under your bed for two weeks because you thought you looked bad blonde?” Natasha asks, snorting before she starts actually laughing.

“What? If you saw it you’d understand. I couldn’t go in public like that. Hell, I couldn’t go in _private_ like that. And Rhodey thought it was _hilarious_ to laugh at my ruining my good looks,” Tony says, continuing with his dramatics.

Bucky doubles over at the waist and laughs so hard he ends up running to the bathroom to throw up.

“That was a goal I never thought I’d achieve. I’m telling Rhodey that you guys think I’m funny so now he has to laugh at my bad jokes,” Tony says, pulling out his phone and tapping at the screen in a flurry.

*

Bucky had no idea how Tony ended up tagging along to watch Nat dance but he didn’t mind having Tony there with him. They were both doing homework while Natasha twirled and moved with far more grace than Bucky would credit to the human body. Tony’s homework looked almost more terrifying than Nat’s feet and Bucky decides that he is very, _very_ glad that he decided that math was horrible and needed to be thrown into the void. Tony, however, keeps giving _his_ homework apprehensive looks.

“What?” he asks finally.

“What is _that_?” Tony asks, pointing at a particularly large text on abnormal psychology.

“A text book? You have a few over there,” he points out, gesturing to some very bland looking math texts.

“Okay but there _that much_ stuff on people who do weird shit?” Tony asks, head tilted to the side.

“Trust me I’m shocked that that much math can go in a text book too. But yes, humans are weird and sometimes we do weird things,” he says, vastly over simplifying psychology as a whole.

“You should show him the DSM,” Natasha suggests, somehow able to talk despite her dancing. Bucky was certain he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on not busting his toes, making his body look pretty, listening to a conversation, and talking all at once but then Natasha was special so it didn’t surprise him that she figured it out.

“DSM?” Tony asks.

“Diagnostics and Statistical Manuel of Mental Disorders,” Bucky explains.

Tony smacks his palm to his forehead, “oh my god I knew that. My brain is fried from doing all this damn space-y stuff. I don’t even _need_ astrophysics, I just took it because Jane asked me to and I like her so I figured why not? I should have known better than to take a class I have no background in. I only have an eighty, I’m going to have to get Jane to tutor me,” he mumbles, glaring down at his textbook and notes.

“You _only_ have an eighty?” Bucky says, “sounds good to me. Also if you like Jane you should have asked her out instead of torturing yourself with astrophysics,” he points out.

“What? No, I like Jane like a _person_ not a potential dating partner. She’s brilliant, funny, a good conversationalist, and a fantastic scientist. And even if she wasn’t all of those things she’s dating someone so. I took astrophysics because I figured it would be cool to see Jane in her element. Unfortunately I forgot that I’d be _out_ of my element and trust me, and eighty is not a good grade for me.” Yeah, Bucky would bet, the guy is a genius. He probably wasn’t used to ‘low’ grades.

Out of the corner of his eye he watches Natasha pause in her movements, giving Tony an appraising look for a moment but she goes back to dancing quickly so Bucky ignores it.

*

Tony, in his defense, has always been a little clueless when it came to relationships in part because he’s demiromantic and never knew what the hell was going on anyways. He’s _pretty_ sure he had romantic feelings for Pepper that one time, but then she started dating Peggy so he let it go. But this, whatever it was, was more of what he felt then with Pepper so _maybe_ it was romantic attraction? He had no idea but Rhodey _insisted_ on telling him to talk to them about it. Well, he assumed it was one person not two but it was the same kind of deal.

He was hesitant, though, because that meant explaining the demiromantic thing and a lot of people kind of scoffed at that. Rhodey had for a long time before he realized that Tony did genuinely lack all romantic interest most of the time and then he pulled his head out of his butt. Still- Bucky and Natasha happened to be open-minded but what if they weren’t _that_ open minded? Actually he probably got ahead of himself there- the fact that they would be in a poly relationship would probably throw them off enough to run away into the distance and he would miss Natasha’s memes and arguing over pointless stuff with Bucky.

But he had long ago decided that harboring feelings towards someone, or someone _s_ on this case, without them knowing was weird and creepy. Mostly because people did that to him all the time, started feeling all warm and fuzzy towards him when all he had been looking for was sex and then they got mad when he didn’t feel anything back. So he resolves himself to tell Bucky and Natasha but like… later.

Unfortunately for him they were persistent and instead of letting him avoid them while he procrastinated on talking about things they found him walking through the cafeteria close to where they first met. “Stark, where are you going?” Bucky asks, catching up to him quickly. Tony curses his long legs and then curses Natasha’s long legs when she catches up with him too. Damn.

“Um, the lab?” he tries.

“You don’t have labs on Wednesdays, just that nine a.m astrophysics class that you hate with Jane,” Natasha says and he curses them again for knowing him too well.

“Don’t you two have class in an hour?” he asks, hoping to scare them off or something.

“Yeah, which is why we figured we’d eat with you, if you’re alright with that,” Bucky adds slowly.

“I… yeah I guess,” he mumbles.

“You don’t sound so sure about that?” Natasha says, raising an eyebrow in question.

“I might me half in love with you. Both of you,” he blurts.

“Smooth,” a new voice adds, “I can see why you two like him so much.”

*

Natasha and Bucky have been tiptoeing around the Tony thing and they both knew it so they finally sat down to try and… _do_ something about it. “I like him. Romantically. Sorry,” Bucky mumbles, looking away guiltily.

“Me too, no need to feel guilty. And I don’t really care if you care about him unless you’ve stopped caring about me in the meantime,” she says. She did the poly thing with Clint and Phil for awhile but ultimately they were closer to each other than her and she left, no hard feelings. Sometimes people just grew out of each other though she’d be pretty upset if Bucky outgrew her even if she’d leave it be.

“I haven’t,” Bucky says quickly, “I just… care about him too? I don’t know, it’s weird.”

“Not really, contrary to popular belief people can romantically love more than one person at a time. I’ve done it,” she says.

Bucky looks back to her and frowns, tilting his head to the side. “ _When_? You are honestly full of surprises. But… what about the asexual thing? People don’t really get that and-” she cuts him off.

“If he’s ignorant about it we’re dropping his ass like a hot potato. Obviously. And to answer your first question with Clint and Phil years ago. It didn’t work out but I liked it while it lasted, it kind of made things easier in some ways given that I had more people there for me emotionally and romantically. But working out a three-way dynamic can also be difficult,” she adds. Also contrary to popular belief given that some people seemed to think polyamory meant being super open minded and not caring about ‘normal’ relationship rules. Most dynamics, in her experience, _did_ fit in normative relationship standards, they just extra people. That wasn’t the case across the board but people liked to stick poly relationships in some really weird boxes. Like a lot of threesomes. She was certain that those people didn’t know how much work a threesome was.

“Thanks,” Bucky says softly, leaning into Natasha. She pulls him close and runs her fingers through his long, soft hair.

“No problem. But we have to talk to him. It’s creepy to secretly pine.” She’s had it happen to her enough times to know.

*

Tony, Natasha, and Bucky whirl around to find a small blonde standing there grinning. “Hey, the pansexual pixie!” Tony says excitedly, recognizing the short blonde by Bucky and Natasha’s stories.

“Fuck you,” the blonde snaps, “who told him that?” he asks, glaring between Natasha and Bucky. They immediately cite each other and then give each other suspicious looks.

“It was Bucky,” Tony tells Steve.

“We’re having a talk later,” The blonde says forebodingly, “but right now you three need to work out this relationship thing. Clint, Phil and I have been talking and-”

“We’ve got it covered, Stevie, and Tony started the conversation already so you can go run off to your witch craft class now,” Bucky tells him, making a shooing motion.

“There are classes on _witch craft_? What the hell is going _on_ in the humanities departments?” Tony asks, flabbergasted once again by the weird things the humanities majors got up to.

“That’s right, I’m a certified witch and I _will_ curse you if you mess with my best friends,” the blonde says and with that he walks off.

“Is… is that _legit_?” he asks, half terrified half wanting to learn the art of witch craft so he could curse Ivan Vankov out of his damn lab.

“It’s a history course, Tony, he isn’t learning _actual_ witchcraft,” Bucky assures him.

“That’s disappointing. I was kind of hoping I could learn a curse or two,” he says sadly.

“We can look it up later. Right now we have a relationship to sort, so to get to the point us too. Caring I mean… we care about you also… god that went awkward fast,” Natasha mumbles.

“I’m asexual do not have sex with me ever, please,” Bucky blurts out, making things ten times more awkward.

“I’m demiromantic!” Tony says excitedly because Bucky would get it, the scoffing people did when a non-normative orientation was brought up.

“Oh neat! You must be so confused right now,” Bucky says, his face lighting up with surprise and happiness, though probably at meeting someone with an orientation somewhat like his own, not Tony’s confusion.

“Yeah, I have no clue what’s happening but I’m digging it so far so here I am. Okay, so I was kind of avoiding you guys to avoid the communication thing a bit because I didn’t like talking about things but also pining after people is super creepy. I’ve had _so many_ people get all weird and clingy with me when I didn’t want whatever sexual relationship I had to be a romantic one and I didn’t want to do that to you guys,” Tony says in a rush.

“Oh, I get that too! People act like you owe them something because you made them feel something and you’re like no, not my problem boo boo, your feelings are your issue,” Natasha says, lighting up also.

“Right? I don’t care if you want a romantic relationship, I don’t, don’t act like I owe you a relationship because we did the do a few times. Jesus. Also no worries on the sex thing, Bucky, I prefer enthusiastic participants, obviously. That is really the only kind of participant you should have, honestly.” Plus it was just weird for him if he was unsure about his partner being sure. It threw everything off and ruined the mood.

“I’m enthusiastic,” Natasha offers and then quickly looks at Bucky, clearly worried she might have overstepped there.

“What? I don’t care if you two have sex, just leave me out of it,” Bucky says, waving a hand around and wrinkling his nose a little.

“Huh. That’s awesome. So Bucky’s asexual and at least biromantic, I’m pansexual and demiromantic, so what are you?” Tony asks Natasha.

“I am the meme lord,” she says, deadpan.


End file.
